Sterile Neutrinos Unlocking Secrets

The neutrino is perhaps the most fascinating inhabitant of the subatomic world. Nearly massless, this fundamental particle experiences only the weak nuclear force and the much fainter force of gravity. With no more than these feeble connections to other forms of matter, a neutrino can pass through the entire Earth with just a tiny chance of hitting an atom. Ghosts, who are said to be able to pass through walls, have nothing on neutrinos.

The neutrinos’ phantom properties are not the only thing that sets them apart from other fundamental particles. They are unique in that they don’t have a fixed identity. The three known forms of neutrinos are able to transform into one another through a cyclical process called neutrino oscillation. In addition to being subatomic specters, they are also quantum chameleons.  READ MORE...

Quantum Universe Inside an Atom

In many ways, the quest for what's truly fundamental in our Universe is the story of probing the Universe on smaller scales and at higher energies.

By going inside the atom, we revealed the atomic nucleus, its constituent protons and neutrons, and the quarks and gluons inside, plus many other spectacular features.

It's through this investigation of the subatomic world that we've revealed the elementary building blocks of our Universe and the rules that allow them to bind together to compose our cosmic reality.

If you wanted to uncover the secrets of the Universe for yourself, all you’d have to do is interrogate the Universe until it revealed the answers in a way you could comprehend them. 

When any two quanta of energy interact — irrespective of their properties, including whether they’re particles or antiparticles, massive or massless, fermions or bosons, etc. — the result of that interaction has the potential to inform you about the underlying laws and rules that the system has to obey. 

If we knew all the possible outcomes of any interaction, including what their relative probabilities were, then and only then would we claim to have some understanding of what was going on. Being quantitative in precisely this fashion, asking not only “what happens” but also “by how much” and “how often,” is what makes physics the robust science that it is.

Quite surprisingly, everything that we know about the Universe can, in some way, be traced back to the most humble of all the entities we know of: an atom. 

An atom remains the smallest unit of matter we know of that still retains the unique characteristics and properties that apply to the macroscopic world, including the physical and chemical properties of matter. And yet, an atom is a fundamentally quantum entity, with its own energy levels, properties, and conservation laws. 

Moreover, even the humble atom couples to all four of the known fundamental forces. In a very real way, all of physics is on display, even inside a single atom. Here’s what they can tell us about the Universe.   READ MORE...